Because I made sure to give my running commentary to my friends while I subjected myself to this utter travesty of a story, let me run down my thoughts here.
First, TACOS. The TACOS were much worse than some of you were saying. Nobody would shut the fuck up about TACOS right out of the gate. Literally the NPC that gives us our first quest, not even two lines of dialog in? "I see you want to experience Tuliyollal at a more leisurely pace. WHY DON'T YOU GO GRAB SOME TACOS FROM B'RUK EVU'S PLACE? LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHO B'RUK EVU IS EVEN THOUGH YOU'VE BEEN TO HIS PLACE MULTIPLE TIMES ALREADY. ALSO TACOS. YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THE TACOS. TACOS. TACOS." Random bumfuck migrant talking to his dad we hear in the business? First rattle out of the dad is "HAHA, YOU STILL LOVE TACOS, DON'T YOU ME BOY?". Wuk Lamat injects her presence into our TACO dining session? "BOY I SURE DO LOVE TACOS."
Not even fucking Thavnair was this bad with how it presented curry as a regional food. But apparently cultural diversity means TACOS, I guess.
Second, the funeral ceremony for Sphene. We overhear random kid crying to his equally crybaby mom about missing Sphene and not wanting to live with the memory of Sphene having died if it's just going to be a constant reminder that she's dead and gone. Wuk Lamat responds with a completely halfassed attempt at trying to help people who have never had to deal with grief before deal with grief, immediately gets pushback, shrugs, walks away, then comes up to us and basically goes "Welp, they're all as retarded as I thought they were. I hope they just get over it eventually."
And what's the MOST fucking asinine about this moment isn't Wuk Lamat's total autism, because I can expect that much even if it is a bit egregious all things considered, but the fact that we have fucking Alphinaud, Alisaie, G'raha Tia, and Krile present when this happens. Three out of four of these people were with us every step of the way of Endwalker. One of these four people had a firsthand account of everything we all experienced throughout Endwalker. We have four, no, FIVE qualified people here (counting ourselves) who know DAMN well by this point how to confront overwhelming despair and move on past it. We practically inspired the whole fucking star to that much. A couple of them even fucking repeated the lessons of Endwalker here and there during MSQ of Dawntrail.
And yet SOMEHOW. Inexplicably. The people most qualified for getting people to pull their heads out of their asses with this sort thing all collectively shrug their shoulders and go "Sucks. We dunno what to do either."
The fucking Leveilleur twins, who are usually the FIRST to be outspoken about this sort of thing, are dead fucking silent in the face of this. And you know what? You cannot use "Well, it's not our place to talk since we took their queen from them" as an excuse considering ALL of fucking GARLEMALD, and ESPECIALLY how you've had these two kids practically spearhead Garlemald recovery efforts. What in the fuck happened to "Refraining from helping someone you have the means to help is not wisdom, it is indolence"?
Third, the new dungeon. It is the only thing I liked about this patch so far. I like the whole "modern high-tech zombie outbreak" aesthetic everything has midway in and I'm absolutely certain people are going to Dungeon Explore that one in particular for gposing. It's neat. The final boss fight was also neat.
HOWEVER, and I didn't really think about this until after the fact, but it's kinda completely fucked up that we just dragged a small child who, only a short while before, had absolutely no concept of death or dying, through a bloodstained facility that probably reeked of death, shit, and rot, put down practical zombies right in front of him, and essentially subjected him to even more horrors he can scarcely comprehend. And it's even MORE fucked up that the attitude from EVERYBODY in light of this is just "Yeah, this is fine. All of this is perfectly fine. Just another day in the life, huh? It's all okay because we're gonna find out about the baby boy's momma here! Yay!". Like, we didn't HAVE to drag him along with us through all of that. And yet we did. Against all sane judgment, we did.
Fourth, OUR FILLER ARC.
Sub-topic: Why is Hiroi so goddamned obsessed with animal feces in this expansion? All the minor flavor quest dialog that most people are gonna skip over is just filled with "We eat, breathe, LIVE in animal shit. Animal shit is key to EVERYTHING in our lives. Animal shit is ALL." It was funny, yet questionable before, but now we have the Native American cat people straight up saying "Yeah, we use buffalo shit for medicine, medicinal patches, soap, fuel/kindling for fires, AND we season our food with it!".
Main topic: Everything about this filler arc was retarded. Okay, so Koana was actually born hhetsarro, got abandoned by his parents, and now has to basically embrace his heritage in order to solve the problem of the buffalo migrating onto where the train tracks are. Now, if anyone else recalls, we get three primary conditions/complicating factors laid out to us in the duration of this whole setup.
1: We can't run the trains as is anyway because the sound of the train and the rumbling of the earth as it moves along spooks the buffalo and will most likely disrupt their migratory patterns, thus driving them into a frenzy.
2. Koana COULD make a quieter train, but then we run the risk of the buffalo stepping onto tracks and getting run over. We also can't just blow the whistle to ward them away because the buffalos are easily spooked and this could also disrupt them.
3. We establish that a giant fuckoff dinosaur is the thing driving the buffalo away from their food source and making this a problem in the first place. Ergo, it's very presence, and the aetherial signature it puts out, is disruptive to the buffalo.
Okay, Koana stupidly throws himself into the giant fuckoff dinosaur and gets yeeted in order to protect a tiny buffalo, but survives because PLOT said so. That's stupid. Whatever.
What's fucking ridiculous here is, after defeating the giant fuckoff dinosaur, Erenville – who should be the SMARTEST motherfucker in the room in most given situations – just straight up proposes, "Why don't we use the giant fuckoff dinosaur's scales, imbue it with the aether of the giant fuckoff dinosaur, and basically set it up as a silent whistle to ward the buffalo away from the train tracks without disturbing them?"
How in the fuck does that make sense? Why would the prey species, upon sensing what they THINK is the presence of their apex predator, just arbitrarily treat it as a minor thing to casually displace themselves away from instead of naturally getting panicked into a frenzy over the fact that "OH SHIT THE APEX PREDATOR IS NEARBY"?
But okay, okay. For the sake of argument, and since we're already doing this nonsensical thing anyway, surely AT THE VERY LEAST, we can sound the "whistle" well in advance to make sure we KEEP the buffalo off the track while the train is in operation, right?
Nah. We're gonna get smack dab right on a buffalo on the tracks and sound the whistle. And, because the plot needs it to happen, the buffalo will just calmly shuffle off the tracks, and hey! It doesn't even disturb a pack of buffalo that are RIGHT fucking near the tracks either! Why? Because It Just Works

. We have invented a Todd Howard whistle. Congratulations.
Small nitpick: It bugs me that we have that brief moment afterwards of Erenville talking about carrying his mom's wishes with him, while we have the camera specifically pan to show that he has a keychain of the robot body his mom used hanging off his backpack, which MORE THAN SPEAKS FOR ITSELF, and YET, we still have Wuk Lamat chiming in anyway to point out "BRO, YOU HAVE A KEYCHAIN OF YOUR DEAD MOM ON YOUR BAG! HERE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR DEAD MOM AND YOU'RE CARRYING A KEYCHAIN OF YOUR DEAD MOM!". Like we couldn't just have the emphasis on the visual speak for itself.
Fifth: Lol. Lmao. Unironically had Gulool Ja's mom be an ULTRA simp, go "I can fix him" with Zoraal Ja, and then threw her baby into a river like fucking Moses when that clearly didn't work out. I feel for the kid and how broken he is by this information, but... God. I must be a horrible person because I laughed during that whole scene. Especially when Zoraal Ja had his fucking "THAT BABY AIN'T MINE" spergout. Absolute insanity. What the fuck kind of story are they even trying to tell here?
Last: Our "Tale of Two Sphenes". I'm calling it now. It's more Ascian bullshit. Hiroi and Yoshida don't know how to move the story forward on its own, so we're doing Ascian bullshit YET AGAIN. Every bit of this setup absolutely reeks of previous Ascian bullshit. We know Yoshida's said there's still Ascians out there and he played at being a coy fuck about their involvement in the story going forward. We're back to Ascian bullshit.